


we'll rest easy

by taiyaki (ballonlea)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, Self-Harm, Vent Writing, spoilers for sylvix supports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 06:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20944088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballonlea/pseuds/taiyaki
Summary: Felix was both horrified and completely unsurprised at the sight he found in Sylvain’s room.





	we'll rest easy

**Author's Note:**

> hello please take this, it's my first time writing for sylvix even though i've been obsessed with them since i started playing the game a few months ago
> 
> [ based off of this tweet ](https://twitter.com/djuraaah/status/1180987707926831104?s=20) (cw: self-harm)
> 
> [ now has art by the lovely @natendo_art !!!!!! ](https://twitter.com/natendo_art/status/1182043207150034945?s=20) (cw: self-harm) (tysm for this btw this is truly an honor....!!!!!)

Felix was both horrified and completely unsurprised at the sight he found in Sylvain’s room.

Sylvain was sitting on the ground, a shattered wine bottle beside him. Ripped pages from the books stacked up beside his bed were strewn about in some sort of circle around him. He sat with his head between his knees, one hand clenched so tightly in his hair that Felix worried he would tear it all out. The other hand was rather limp, laying on the floor beside him in a small puddle of blood.

Felix’s first instinct was to kneel down and assess the damage—he assumed Sylvain had accidentally cut himself on the shards of the bottle whenever he’d broken it. It wasn’t any of Felix’s business. None of it was, really. He’d come to Sylvain’s room only to see if he was hungry. His… notable presence was missing during dinner, and Felix hated to admit that the relative silence had been unsettling. And he  _ loathed _ to admit that he had been worried, that he hadn’t even been able to focus on the bit of training he tried to squeeze in after dinner.

Sylvain didn’t seem to be very conscious, and if he was, then he wasn’t alert. He didn’t lift his head when he heard the door open or when Felix got closer to him. Carefully, Felix lifted Sylvain’s arm up from off the ground, turning it over to investigate where exactly he might be bleeding from.

If he had cut himself on the bottle, then it was very much not accidental.

Felix felt like his blood had turned to ice, and he immediately went to tilt Sylvain’s face up. Was he conscious? Was he  _ alive? _ Felix thought he was pretty good at keeping a poker face, but Sylvain must have been better at it if it meant something like this had happened without anyone noticing.

Sylvain’s eyes were open, thankfully. Streaks from leftover tears remained on his flushed cheeks, and the only word Felix could think of to describe the expression he wore was  _ empty. _

“Pathetic, huh?” Sylvain asked, speaking slowly. He was definitely some level of intoxicated.

“No,” Felix said. “You’re not yourself right now.”

Sylvain laughed at that, letting his head hang down again. “This is the most like myself I’ve felt in years.”

Felix shook his head. “C’mon, get up. You’re not staying here.”

He had a first aid kit in his own dorm room. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. It wouldn’t be good for Sylvain to get treated by anyone else, anyway. He figured Sylvain would rather have privacy, and he was pretty sure he’d get busted for drinking if they saw anyone else.

“Just leave me here,” Sylvain said. “‘M not gonna die. I’m just tired.”

“I’m not leaving you.” Felix stood up, grabbing Sylvain’s non-injured hand. His palm was smeared with ink. “Can you stand?”

It took him a few moments, but Sylvain accepted Felix’s help. Felix lifted him up more than Sylvain stood up on his own, but he seemed to be able to walk well enough. Checking first to make sure no one was in the hallway, Felix guided Sylvain down to his room, closing the door behind him.

He instructed Sylvain to sit down on his bed and  _ not  _ touch anything while he dug around in his drawers for his kit.

“I thought you hated me,” Sylvain slurred. “Felix. You hate me.”

Felix rolled his eyes. “I don’t hate you,” he said. “Even if I did, I still wouldn’t have just left you like that. No one would.”

“Don’t you want me to die? Wouldn’t it be better for you?” Sylvain laughed, like he had to force it out of himself.

“No,” Felix said. He stood up, small box in hand, and stood in front of Sylvain. “Don’t say that. Give me your wrist.”

“I’ll say what I want. ‘S my life.” Sylvain clenched his fist, and Felix’s stomach lurched at how the motion made more blood pool at the cuts. “Is it?”

“Yeah, it’s your life. And you have to take care of it.” Felix punctuated his sentence by rubbing a disinfectant into the wounds. “This stings.”

“Didn’t even feel it.”

Felix couldn’t quite place why seeing Sylvain’s wrist all cut up and bleeding disturbed him more than anything on the battlefield had. Was it because it was self-inflicted? Was it because of how Sylvain was acting? He couldn’t say he preferred the Sylvain whose only objective was to take every girl he laid eyes on back to his bedroom, but he wished the Sylvain who spoke candidly was a little happier.

Felix tore a long strip of bandage and started to wrap it tightly around Sylvain’s wrist. The blood soaked through the first layer, so Felix wrapped it a few more times before securing it.

“You hurt anywhere else?” Felix asked. “Legs, stomach, shoulders, anywhere?”

“Just there,” Sylvain said. “Thanks. I’ll be going now.”

Sylvain moved to get up, but Felix pushed him back down. It didn’t take much force, and Sylvain was in no place to argue.

“You’re not going back there,” Felix said. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but you’re not going back. Got it?”

“What’s gotten into me?” Sylvain echoed. “It’s always been this way. Always. I’ve never not wanted to peel away my skin and pour out every last drop. My whole life.”

“That’s selfish.”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care about anything!”

Sylvain flinched when Felix raised his voice. Felix felt like he should do something, like he should card his fingers through Sylvain’s hair or cup his cheek or do anything but stand there with his hands by his sides.

“Sorry,” Felix said, and he supposed it was a good enough substitute for his inability to move. “I didn’t want to yell at you.”

“I mean, you’re right.” Sylvain’s gaze shifted from somewhere a thousand miles away to directly at Felix. “Don’t you think I should have died? All those years ago? He should have killed me.”

It hurt that Felix couldn’t even place which incident Sylvain was talking about. It hurt that it seemed like nobody had ever noticed whenever Miklan had tried to dispose of Sylvain in the past. Somehow, it had always fallen upon Felix and Ingrid to figure out where Sylvain was whenever he went missing. Whether it came to Ingrid pulling him up out of a well or Felix desperately trying to keep Sylvain warm in the middle of a winter night, nobody else had  _ ever  _ seemed to notice.

Most of all, it hurt that now Felix was the blind one. His close watch on Sylvain had somehow slipped as the years went on, and…

And this was all Felix’s fault now, wasn’t it?

“Don’t say that!” Felix grit his teeth. “Do  _ not  _ say that.”

“Then I’ll just think it.” That empty laugh came through again, but it looked like Sylvain was crying.

“I…” Felix trailed off. He finally felt like he could move again, and he placed a hand on Sylvain’s shoulder. “Don’t do that, either. You can’t just keep stuff like that in your head. You’ll do something stupid.”

Sylvain shrugged off Felix’s touch. “If I can’t say it, and I can’t think it, then what am I supposed to do?”

Felix was at a loss. He didn’t mean to, but he understood Sylvain then. Not being able to talk about anything, not being able to think anything, not being able to let himself even feel anything… It made sense, then, why he would carve lines into his skin like that. Sylvain couldn’t control how he was hurt by his own thoughts, and he couldn’t control how he was hurt by his own brother, but he  _ could  _ control how he was hurt by his own hand.

Felix reached down, gently holding that hand that had scratched those marks just a short while ago. It almost reminded him of when they were younger, when Felix would get upset and Sylvain always held his hand and knew exactly how to calm him down. The roles were reversed now, of course, and it made Felix wonder if Sylvain ever actually knew what to do back then or if he always just improvised.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Felix said, and the comfort felt awfully clunky in his mouth. “Maybe not right now. But one day you will.”

Sylvain rolled his eyes, wiping his cheek with his free hand. “You don’t get it.”

“So what if I don’t?” Felix was harsher than he wanted to be, but Sylvain didn’t flinch this time. “Even if I don’t get it, you’re gonna have to be okay. You can’t break our promise.”

“Right,” Sylvain said. He didn’t sound convinced at all.

“I… I worry about that. A lot.”

Sylvain’s silence practically forced Felix to continue. He didn’t like how vulnerable he felt saying something like that, but he knew Sylvain must have felt an astronomical amount of the same thing. It was fair, then, for Felix to open up. They would be even.

“Every day.” Felix gently squeezed Sylvain’s hand. “Every day I think about it. I didn’t know about any of this, and I still thought about it.”

“You—”

“I’m not done,” Felix said shortly. “No one is invincible. Who knows what could have happened tonight? It could have been an accident. And maybe I don’t get it, but I get  _ you. _ You can tell me whatever you want, whenever you want to, but you do  _ not  _ get to make the choice to die all by yourself. Got it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I got it,” Sylvain said. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“You would have caused much more of a scene if you were merely looking for attention.”

The jab made Sylvain laugh. A real laugh this time, and Felix was being pulled into a hug before he knew it. It was so tight that he felt like he might have been the only thing holding Sylvain together at that moment, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if he was. He held Sylvain for a long while, and when Sylvain went to let go, he held him for a moment longer.

“I know I can’t fix it,” Felix said, “but I hope you’re feeling at least a little better tonight.”

“I am. Thanks.” Sylvain smiled, and it was small, but it was real.

Felix was happy too, for a moment, and then he realized that if he wanted any chance at keeping that smile on Sylvain’s face, then it would probably do him some good to clean up the mess they had left in there. He didn’t want Sylvain to stumble upon the same scene and trigger all those bad feelings again.

“You can rest here tonight,” Felix said. “I’ll keep an eye on you. There’s clothes you can wear in the drawer.” He hesitated to leave Sylvain, but he stepped back towards the door. “I’ll be right back.”

Sylvain caught Felix’s wrist before he could get too far. “Don’t leave. Not yet.”

So Felix remained for as long as Sylvain wanted him to. They talked about class that day, and how Ingrid had intended to make a plate to bring to Sylvain but ended up eating it all herself without even realizing, and how Felix had been trying a new technique that evening to use in the next mock battle. It felt normal after such a taxing night, and it felt like Felix could see the light coming back to Sylvain’s eyes as they spoke.

Felix left to clean up Sylvain’s room once he was certain that Sylvain had fallen asleep. He tried not to think too hard about what Sylvain had been feeling as he picked up torn pages from textbooks about crests and sweeped away shards from a tall bottle of wine and wiped off a bloodied dagger that Sylvain really had no business having. The room was good as new when he was all finished, and it looked like the sky was beginning to brighten back up when he got back to his own room.

Even if he was only going to get a few minutes of sleep, Felix crawled into bed next to Sylvain. Some was better than nothing, and feeling Sylvain’s warmth and listening to his slow, even breaths was better than anything.

He didn’t know if it would last, but at least for those few minutes, it felt like everything was going to turn out alright.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!! i love vent writing. it feels a little good to post this
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/mezzosaka)


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